The Challenge of Containing Japan's Nuclear Plant

8/21/2013 11:01PM

The leakage water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been declared a level 3 "serious incident" by regulators. The WSJ's Deborah Kan speaks with Kathryn Higley, Head of Nuclear Engineering at Oregon State University.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... the ... is struggling to contain though we're still yet of contaminated water from that crippled ... the fishing ITT nuclear power plant ... and ever con joining me now is Catherine Hinckley ... who is the head of the nuclear engineering department at Oregon State University ... Japan's new clear regulator has declared this a level the rainy ... meaning a serious incident so how worried should we be ... well put this in context of the international community has a rating scale from one to seventy ... seven being the most serious an accident in two thousand eleven ... was a level seven ... this most recent incident is ... rated a ... level three ... and I'm ... it's pretty level three is a serious incident which means that there's high levels of contamination ... but it has a small footprint and a low likelihood of significant public ... exposure so that's really that the criteria so this means the workers have to deal ... with a challenging situation but the public's not likely to be impacted ... ok and when you say I challenging situation I guess a lot of people are thinking I'm jail authorities really know what to do ... aam when this herbal plants and on how to deal with and linkages and such is the one the reason we see in ... so so admittedly the situation that they find themselves in it's it's definitely challenging a ... cab groundwater that it's it's coming end of the ... sub structures ... from presumably because of ... the respect that occurred early on ... they're putting water into the plant they have to deal with that ... and then they're trying to store large quantities ... of water on on site said the SEC's or are challenging ... aam for ... for a walk ... so when when when you talk about the water I mean how and ... how ... and how much danger is the plant from actually ... I'm seriously contaminating and groundwater it in that area ... so Saturday and I've seen shows that that the groundwater contamination is ... largely restricted on site and that the discharges out into the marine environment seem to be ... a very small fraction of what happened during the ... initial accident so ... it certainly challenging I am on site that you have people that are use to dealing with high lead ... levels of contamination ... and they have been down for a couple years ... so again the challenges to the workers on site to manage this issue ... and ... the impact of the public is is likely to be minor ... in your opinion going forward what do you foresee has been the biggest danger ... aam but in dealing with this plan ... the long term issues baby ... stabilizing the reactor and then ultimately ... out pulling ... out ... the fuel and and that what's left of the fuel out of the forest and out of the spent fuel pools ... and also managing that the contaminated environment and ... that's it that's a long term challenge there's no doubt about it ... and what are the things that you wanna do is manage that water that's moving through the site ... because what that that says she is potentially mobilize any material that's ... in the sub structures potentially ... provides pathways into ... so many other great thing ... so you wanna be able to control that to see when it was getting out ... but again what I've seen so far shows that ... though ... the movement off the site is really a ... very very small fraction ... Catherine Hinckley from Oregon State University ... for more on that story indebted Des beest dot com and ever con ...